Disappearing Person Alerts

Background

In Australia, the incidence of persons being reported missing has grown by almost 30% in the last year, with a significant increase in the reporting of persons under the age of 18. Today, one teenager is reported missing every 20 minutes. In the search for these missing persons, police rely heavily on information from the general public. The greater the number of people who know about a person’s disappearance, the greater the chance of them being found. But traditional alerts were failing to reach the public within the all-important first 24 hours, particularly teenagers, the group most at risk of going missing. The task was to modernise the way missing persons information was distributed to the public, thereby recruiting more young Australians to help find missing persons.